The news that Hollywood wanted to make a film based on Tomb Raider, the successful video game starring Lara Croft, an indefatigable heroine clad in tank-top and hot pants, led to inevitable predictions of another summer white elephant. After all, even blockbusters need a plot; and on the evidence of recent game-to-movie conversions (Super Mario Bros, Streetfighter), filmmakers invariably lose it when confronted with such flimsy source material. But with the shrewd casting of Angelina Jolie as the iconic archaeologist, and under the direction of Simon West, Tomb Raider may be set to confound the cynics. It opens on Friday in the US.

I meet West at his favourite café in Notting Hill before he travels to Pinewood Studios to complete postproduction, and he is quick to admit his initial reservations. 'I thought the studios had to be incredibly creatively bankrupt to even contemplate such a project.'

Having enjoyed two summer hits with Con Air (1997) and The General's Daughter (1999), the British filmmaker seemed like a safe pair of hands. Reluctant to commit himself, West only looked at Tomb Raider again when one of his other projects changed studios and became stuck in development hell. He now had time to devote to the Tomb Raider script, which having passed through a succession of writers, still needed drastic revision. In fact, West rewrote the film from scratch. He was inspired by quest movies such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and David Lean's epics including Lawrence of Arabia and Dr Zhivago and crafted a time-honoured tale of high adventure, which was filmed in London, Iceland and Cambodia. Tomb Raider, the movie, sees Lara Croft in a race against a secret organisation - the Illuminati - to find an ancient clock that holds the secret to time travel. The result is an energetic and occasionally atmospheric two hours of enjoyable hokum.

Tomb Raider will also arrive just in time to grab the zeitgeist's tail. Following the successes of The Matrix and, latterly, Charlie's Angels and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with their high-kicking warrior-women, Tomb Raider 's fearless heroine is the latest one to bash the blokes. Boys and girls will get a kick out of Angelina Jolie's Lara Croft.

'Simon made so many bold choices in this movie,' says Jolie from the set of her current film, Life Or Something Like It, in Seattle. 'I wound up doing the movie because of him. Simon challenged me. He is not a normal action director.'

Even with Jolie - 'the face to launch 10,000 ships', according to West - on board, crafting a decent movie out of such two-dimensional material was never going to be easy and it was the character of Lara Croft that was the sticking point. 'The first three drafts of Tomb Raider had Lara gallivanting in an England straight out of the Austin Powers movies and it was supposed to be contemporary! As a national service, I had to rewrite the script,' he says.

'Angelina's first impression of her character was that as daughter of a lord, she'd be terribly posh, speak with a lisp and drink dainty cups of tea. I had to make it very clear to her that 25-year-old English upper-class girls of today dress down, speak rough and are really quite rugged. Just like the ones in Notting Hill,' says West, who perhaps has got posh girls confused with Posh Spice.

Having beaten the likes of Victoria Beckham and Sandra Bullock to get the role, Jolie's performance is impressive. Lara Croft is not the kind of role that will win her another Oscar but she inhabits the part with commendable intensity. 'She did almost all of her own stunts, she was incredibly brave and worked very, very hard. A lot of the film's success will be down to Angelina,' says West. She makes directing easier - 'Of half a page of dialogue she'll say, "I can do that with a look." And she does.

'Angelina gives the character a depth and realism that elevated the project above the expected video game exploitation film. There really is something special about her, she is genuinely unique. Dark and edgy but also incredibly spiritual and sweet.'

Jolie, who has her earned her status as a Hollywood maverick through a series of bizarre, often explicit, revelations about her marriage to fellow actor Billy Bob Thornton, brought her touch of class to preproduction. 'In deciding on the look for Lara Croft's bedroom I asked Angelina what she thought should be there,' recalls West. Black silk sheets and knives under the bed, she replied. 'She also thought it would be great if Lara, just to the side of her bed, had an electric chair. Like the one she and Billy Bob have at home.'

They are the kind of dark details that attracted West to his first movie, Con Air, notable for its Tarantino-esque touches and grim gags. West's films seem to pander to the lowest common denominator - men with soaring testosterone, girls with guns and plenty of physical and psychological violence. But they all share a common theme: the bond between daughters and fathers. With two daughters of his own (aged six and three), it's a theme close to West's heart.

'I expect the audience to invest in the story emotionally as well as on the usual summer blockbuster level. In Hollywood you have to up your emotional currency. All their great movies have an emotional thread.'

Given added resonance by the casting of real-life father and daughter Jon Voight and Angelina Jolie, the plot of Tomb Raider has Lara Croft striving to save the world and re-connect with her dead father for the first time since childhood. 'Simon himself lost his father when young,' says Jolie.

The climax of the movie is an emotional flood-bath, rather than a riot of action. 'There is a definite magical or mystical element running through the story and this gives the film a sense of wonder,' says West.

As a boy growing up in Burford in the Cotswolds, West dreamed of being a film director like Lean, and, following a successful editing career at the BBC, eventually made his way to America to direct adverts. Movies remained the ambition, though. 'My eyes were always on the careers of Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson, Ridley and Tony Scott - British guys who used advertising as a way to make movies.' His big breakthrough came with the high-profile talking frogs and dancing ants campaigns for Budweiser, which were broadcast extensively during the Superbowl in 1996 - the most expensive time slot in world television. An audience with producer Jerry Bruckheimer (the man behind Pearl Harbor and himself a former advertisement director) followed.

'It was literally him reaching behind to the wall of scripts he'd already bought and tossing me a few, saying, "You can do any one you want." They, unfortunately, all had Rambo-types saving kids from burning orphanages in the last reel. But one did stand out - it had characters like Cyrus the Virus, Diamond Dog, Sally-Can't-Dance, great dialogue, wit and pace. It was called Con Air. '

Although his follow-up, The General's Daughter , an unconvincing military thriller, was a letdown, West's reputation remained unscathed. With Tomb Raider , West has the opportunity to emulate one of his heroes, Ridley Scott, the director of Alien , and become an A-list name. Yes, West has got big plans and they don't just include making the sequel.

Tomb Raider opens on 6 July.

Girls just wanna have guns

Barbarella (1967) Jane Fonda played the scantily clad space adventuress who subsequently became a cult icon. Based on a French comic strip.

Foxy Brown (1974) Pam Grier starred in the blaxploitation classic about a women bent on revenge after the murder of her lover. The character later inspired Tarantino's Jackie Brown, in which Grier also appeared.

Aliens (1986) James Cameron's sequel was superior to Ridley Scott's original sci-fi thriller and Sigourney Weaver was brilliant second time around in her defining role.